


will lead us home.

by redhoods



Category: UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Families of Choice, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 15:30:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21358525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhoods/pseuds/redhoods
Summary: He breathes out quietly and drops his gaze towards the horizon. The moon is beginning its descent towards the mountains, wind howls through the valley, and someone is singing. Low and quiet, melancholic, but surprisingly rich.The song he doesn’t recognize, but the voice he does.Clayton turns his head from the moon to the Reverend to his left and it takes a moment to pick him out even in the low burning fire light. His back is to camp, making him a silhouette of dark hair and dark clothes where he’s sitting in the dirt.
Relationships: Reverend Matthew Mason/Clayton Sharpe
Comments: 11
Kudos: 146





	will lead us home.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nevershootamockingbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevershootamockingbird/gifts).

> this isn't... entirely what i set out to write but like... i'm wildly happy with it anyways.
> 
> for maille for being an angel.
> 
> title from amazing grace.
> 
> tags are hard??? idk what else to tag it with. also i didn't do a read through yet, so if there are glaring errors... i'll find them eventually.

They throw him off the cliff.

He’s not sure who any of them are, their features are indistinct aside from their eyes, he can make out their eyes as if they’re three paces from him, as if he’s not falling from this cliff that he’s never seen before. Wind is whistling and his hair as beating his face and still he sees their eyes watching, accusing.

Appraising and finding him wanting.

Of death, apparently.

He’s falling and then he’s not.

Clayton jerks awake, silent and still as he can be in his bedroll. The last thing he wants to do is invite questions from whoever it is on watch. Instead he tips enough to lay on his back and stare up at the sky. Dark with the pin prick light of stars looking down at them in what should be a taunting manner, probably. A mockery that they’re so far away, so bright, looking down at the insignificant mortals of the earth.

They would be, if this were seventeen months ago, probably.

If he didn’t have Arabella in his life. But he does, he has this stubborn group of people, his stubborn family, and he can find the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. The False Cross that she had shown him once with a twist of her lips and a cut of her eyes at Matthew.

He breathes out quietly and drops his gaze towards the horizon. The moon is beginning its descent towards the mountains, wind howls through the valley, and someone is singing. Low and quiet, melancholic, but surprisingly rich.

The song he doesn’t recognize, but the voice he does.

Clayton turns his head from the moon to the Reverend to his left and it takes a moment to pick him out even in the low burning fire light. His back is to camp, making him a silhouette of dark hair and dark clothes where he’s sitting in the dirt.

Absurdly, the first thing that Clayton thinks is that his back must be aching sitting up like that without anything to lean back against. Not that there’s anything to lean against in this valley. It’s all dirt to the horizon. Watches hadn’t been necessary really, but Aloysius had stayed up while the rest of them had settled in.

No one had woken him for watch though and he wonders if that was intentional.

Matthew is still singing, unaware of his audience.

Something about the song, the tone of his voice, curls right up in Clayton’s ribs, taking up space that’s long been empty. He’s heard Matthew talk in many tones: angry, happy, intimidating, confused, flustered. Never this sort of mournful, none of them have ever mourned for the people they’ve put in the ground. Not more than a passing “poor bastard” anyways and the sign of the cross made by Matthew’s hand over the corpse.

The song continues and he drags his eyes away from the back of Matthew’s head, even though the man’s situational awareness is still close to piss poor, the last thing he wants to do is draw attention to himself. Not when he’s still feeling scraped raw after his dream.

And not when Matthew still sounds so sad.

Clayton can only picture the look on his face and that’s already too much.

There’s still an hour or two before daylight, so he rolls and puts his back to Matthew and closes his eyes, trying to chase a little bit more sleep.

\-----

Aloysius joins him at his corner table at the Gem with a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses and a smirk that promises zero good for anybody. “Evenin’, Sharpe,” he drawls, drawing the words out to twice their usual length. He’s certainly got something up his sleeve.

Heaving a great sigh, Clayton reaches out for his shot glass, wiggles at Aloysius, “Better give me some of that whiskey before you start on whatever it is you’ve sunk your teeth into, Fogg,” he warns, no heat.

It only gets him that slanted grin and a shot glass full to the brim of whiskey.

To his discredit, Aloysius waits until he’s tipped the shot back, “So about you and our dear Father.”

The whiskey burns anyways, shit as it is, and burns ten times worse when he starts choking on it, coughing and hacking, trying to get the liquor out of his lungs where it’s inadvertently ended up. Thankfully, the saloon is mostly empty, only Johnny really looks in their direction, but he knows better at this point than to say anything.

Aloysius on the other hand cackles himself mad, slapping his knee, and hunching over the table. He even fakes wiping away a tear when he sits up once more as Clayton coughs against the last of the shot, “Oh, that was certainly worth any untimely demise you cook up for me.”

“What do you want, Aly?” Clayton asks, voice hoarse as he reaches across the table to snag the whole bottle. He drinks straight from him, cocking his eyebrow up at Aloysius.

Probably sensing he’s in no immediate danger of retribution, Aloysius throws back his own shot, tips the glass onto the table with a clatter, “Mostly I just wanted to see your reaction. You’re a hard man to read on a good day,” he taps his fingers on the upside down glass, “I think that might’ve been the most I’ve seen you react to anything at all, even getting shot in the gut.”

Clayton snorts as he sets the bottle on the table and nudges it across the wood with his fingers, “Point?”

“Did you know the man could sing?” Aloysius asks suddenly.

“Everyone can sing,” Clayton deadpans.

Aloysius squints at him, “So you did know.”

Clayton shrugs.

“Nice soothing voice,” Aloysius carries on, because every one of them has taken to having conversations with him regardless of his participation in said conversation, “Heard him singing in the church when I was making my rounds.”

(That’s one of those things they don’t acknowledge, how sometimes they’ll each make their rounds in the early hours of morning, making sure that they’re all present and accounted for. Clayton’s sure they’ve all run into each other doing it at this point.)

“I’m still not seeing a point,” he says, though not as biting as it once would have been.

Aloysius shrugs, takes the bottle and drinks a healthy swig from it, “Just a shame that he doesn’t share that voice with anyone else, even the rest of us.”

Clayton nearly agrees with him, the words right at the tip of his tongue, but he shoves them back where they belong, “You saying we gotta start sharing everything with each other?”

It gets him a laugh, like Aloysius knows and maybe he does, “Have you seen the plans for the house?” He asks, hopefully leading to something relevant and not jumping the conversation off the rails once more, “We’re going to be in each other’s pockets, secrets are going to be real scarce.”

Then, before Clayton can interject, Aloysius adds, “Hope the walls are thick.”

Clayton groans and takes the bottle out of his hands.

\-----

This needs to stop happening, Clayton thinks a little deliriously as he watches the blood drip from between his fingers onto the wood floor below him.

People really got to stop shooting him in the gut.

It could be worse, it could always be worse, but three times is at least two times too many.

The others are outside, dragging the bodies out and he’s staring at the red bloom on the floor, thinking about roses and the red of Matthew’s cheeks when Aloysius cracks a dirty joke and the red of his lips when he bites them as he’s thinking and the sorta red that Clayton might be able to draw to the surface of his skin with his teeth and lips and tongue and...

His thoughts are spinning wildly out of his own control.

He takes a hesitant step towards the door, sways a little, but takes another, tries to get his throat to work and it takes several tries before he manages, “Matthew!” 

It’s not what he’d meant to say, he’d meant to call for Aloysius, Arabella, the two that seem to know the most about treating wounds, even if they’ve all had to brush up on their skills in the time they’ve known each other. Also he doesn’t want to deal with Matthew’s big brown eyes, all warm and round with worry.

Too late though, the Reverend bursts through the door with Miriam hot on his heels. The apples of his cheeks are red from the heat, the sun, and his eyes are big, and there’s sweat sliding down into the collar of his shirt. No pressed white collar this time though, he’s taken to leaving it behind on these sorts of runs. “Clayton? What’s wrong?”

There’s nothing wrong, he doesn’t think.

Probably nothing wrong.

Matthew’s here, what could really be wrong?

And Matthew comes closer, eyes so warm, like chocolate and Clayton hasn’t had chocolate in so long, “Clayton?”

He sways on his feet and Matthew’s hands are very big and very warm on his upper arms and he sways into that grip, “Ah,” his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and they’re even closer now, he can see the fan of Matthew’s eyelashes, dark and long, “Pretty.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he distantly hears Miriam say and the world swims and goes dark.

Time is weird and he’s not sure how much of it has passed when the world comes back to him, tinny and distant in his ears, like listening through a can on a string when he was a child. He doesn’t try to open his eyes yet, but he listens and waits for the sound to even out, to make sense again.

Someone is singing, very nearby.

He’s on a soft surface too, warm, and there’s a line of heat against his arm and side and someone is singing.

It’s soothing, a lullaby he thinks, not that his momma ever sang him lullabies, but he distantly recognizes the melody, even if the words are alluding him at the moment.

Somehow it takes his mind a long while to realize that it’s Matthew, singing him a lullaby, very close to him. He thinks maybe the line of heat against his side is actually Matthew and something about that shoves itself into that place behind his ribs.

The awareness of pain filters in slower than everything else, the throb of his belly, the slight scratch of bandages, the sting of stitches.

Lastly, the fingers in his hair, brushing through gentle.

The singing stops abruptly though the hand doesn’t withdraw from his hair, “Clayton?”

He groans quietly in response, wanting desperately to turn off his back, to turn into the heat against his side, but the hand slides from his hair to his shoulder, maintaining contact the whole while, keeping him from moving away from the bed. 

Guiltily, he files that away to think about later when he’s not aching and otherwise unaware of his surroundings.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” Matthew says and then louder, “Arabella!”

Thankfully, the hand slides back into his hair.

“Sorry, I know you probably don’t want any attention,” Matthew tells him, making no move to leave his spot on what must be a bed, “But I’m much more scared of Arabella and Miriam than I am of you.”

And, well.

Well.

Huh.

There’s a flurry of footsteps outside the door of whatever room they’re in and the sound of a door knob jiggling, “Is he awake finally?” Arabella’s voice floats near and Clayton already misses the singing though he’s not going to tell her that, “He better damn well be awake.”

“Your concern is—” Clayton has to pause, swallow because his throat is so dry.

“Do shut up, you’re in no position to sass anybody,” Arabella snaps and he shuts his mouth in favor of opening his eyes.

The room is bright, almost too bright, and he squints against it. Arabella’s face is the first thing that comes into focus and he turns his head away from her glare, but that only puts him in line with Matthew’s worried gaze and the fact that the line of heat against his arm has been Matthew’s thigh.

He looks up at the ceiling.

“How are you feeling?” Matthew asks, the hand in his hair there but still now.

“Ow,” Clayton replies.

“Idiot,” Arabella says.

“Witch.”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough out of you two,” Matthew interjects before they can really get started, sounding reproachful.

Clayton is glad he’s looking at the ceiling.

A cool hand touches his arm, “Going to check on your stitches just be still and be quiet,” Arabella says and he can hear the low undercurrent of worry in her voice. 

The blanket he hadn’t realized was over him is removed and Arabella’s cool fingers don’t make any more contact with his bare skin than normal as she cuts away the bandages with the creak of scissors. She keeps a running commentary to herself, low and under her breath, and the air of the room brushes against his wound and he carefully doesn’t flinch.

“How long have I been out?” He croaks in the vague direction of Matthew.

“Three days.”

Fingers trace around the wound, “Miriam’s bringing you some fresh water,” Arabella tells him quietly, “This is healing well. I’m going to put some more salve on it and we’ll need to wrap you back up.” Her hands withdraw, “That doesn’t mean you can go off doing stupid shit though, not this time.”

He curls his fingers against his sides, under the covers where someone’s tucked them, “Yes ma’am.”

“You scared the daylights out of us,” Matthew says quietly as Arabella steps away to prep her herbs.

“Sorry,” he croaks out.

The fingers in his hair start carding through again, “Next time, tell us if you’ve been shot,” Matthew says quietly, then adds, “Or perhaps, have you considered not getting shot?”

Arabella snorts across the room.

Clayton sighs heavily, pulling one of his clumsy hands from the blankets to try and pat Matthew on the knee, though he ends up a little higher than he means to, only lingers for hopefully a second too long, “I’ll take that under advisement, Father.”

“That’s all I can ask.”

He starts taking stock of his body, then says quietly, so quiet, to the ceiling, “You have a lovely singing voice, Matthew.”

“Ah, thank you,” Matthew replies, sounding shy and bashful and Clayton wishes he had the wherewithal to look at him, to handle whatever expression Matthew is currently making, but he doesn’t.

\-----

Clayton comes down the stairs to find the others crowded around the kitchen doorway, peeking in like a bunch of children about to try and sneak dessert. He sneaks up behind them, intent on scaring the daylights outta all three of them, but realizes that means they’re probably looking at Matthew doing goodness knows what and his curiosity is peaked.

It only takes him edging a few feet closer to realize what’s happening.

Matthew is singing again.

Loud and happy, some sort of Christmas hymn maybe.

He can’t even muster a grimace at the thought, especially when he sidles up behind Aloysius to peek as well, taking the gentle elbow to the gut quietly and without revenge.

Matthew’s dressed down, shirt sleeves and a pair of trousers that haven’t been tailored to fit his frame yet, which is to say...

Which is to say, the fact that he’s swaying where he stands at the little wood burning to stove is incredibly distracting, singing not withstanding. His feet are bare against the floors, even though Clayton can feel the cold wood through two layers of socks.

He knows Matthew runs warmer than most though.

“Alright, everyone!” Matthew calls, clearly unaware of his audience, “Stew’s do—” he turns and spots them all standing in the doorway, cheeks immediately flaming bright red. “Ah, how long have you all been standing there?”

Miriam takes mercy on him because Clayton certainly can’t, too busy taking in the open splay of the collar of Matthew’s shirt, laces pulled tight. It’s revealing a tantalizing stretch of skin that he really needs to stop staring at, but can’t pull his eyes from. “Oh, sugar, just long enough,” she says, sweeping into the room to pat Matthew on the arm, “Stew smells delicious.”

Even Matthew’s ears are red.

Arabella elbows him hard in the ribs and he grunts, but doesn’t retaliate on that either because it draws his attention to safer subjects.

“Gonna stare a hole right through the good father’s chest,” Aloysius teases low and Clayton does jab fingers into his side, enjoying the pained yelp he gets.

The others are well used to tuning them out by now and are starting to dish up stew, though as Aloysius edges away, Clayton stays on the spot, watching Matthew shyly edge towards him. It still amazes him how a man so big can make himself look so small.

Matthew comes close until their feet are touching, “I wasn’t singing too horribly, was I?”

Clayton blinks at him disbelieving, reaches out to push his knuckles against Matthew’s belly, feels his inhale as he nudges a little closer until he can actually feel the heat coming off of Matthew, “You’ve got a lovely singing voice, Matt,” he says lowly.

This is still new to both of them, fragile and careful.

Still he turns his chin up to accept the soft brush of Matthew’s lips against his cheeks, his quiet exhale of, “You’re too kind.”

“Just bein’ honest,” he replies.

“You two better come get some stew before Aly eats it all!” Arabella crows from the otherside of the room.

Clayton pats Matthew gently on the belly and puts some distance between them, “Aloysius, I’ll put your ass out into the snow!”

\-----

Spring brings clear weather and new building plans.

It’s been nice being under the same roof for this last half a year, but after a winter of tripping over each other and constantly bumping elbows, spreading out sounds much more promising. They agree without speaking about it that the big house, the main house, is Miriam and Arabella’s.

He and Matthew talk about it many nights, curled together under as many blankets as they can get away with, trying to preserve the warmth and get used to each other.

They agree on something simple, single story, with hidey holes and a few trap doors to get themselves out in a hurry. Arabella helps with the plans, she’s got a much better mind for it than any of the rest of them. She’s also the one with the contacts and the means for procuring most of the materials.

Whatever she can’t get her hands on, Miriam certainly can.

When all signs of snow have passed, they start building, recruiting help from the town in their variety of ways that they all employ. It seems like no time before they’re walking through the wall less frame of their home. 

“Clay,” Matthew says, standing at one of the main posts that make up what’s going to be their bedroom, “Let me see your dagger.”

His mind hangs up on _their bedroom_ for a few seconds before he moves into action, pulling his dagger from its sheath and joining Matthew, “Don’t cut yourself.”

Matthew sighs, loud and exaggerated, “One time,” he grouses, but takes the dagger by the hilt and twists it in his grip, easy and familiar in a way that hooks in Clayton’s gut, a way that he’s still not sure how to handle sometimes, how overwhelmed with heat and affection he feels.

“What are you up to?” He asks and wraps himself around Matthew’s back, even if he can’t see like this, touching his forehead to the middle of Matthew’s sweaty back. His shirt’s been sticking to him for hours and Clayton’s been careful to position himself where he can’t see that for the sake of his own sanity.

“Leaving our mark.”

It takes a second for it to click together, “Are you carving our initials into the wood?” He asks Matthew’s back incredulously.

Matthew huffs quietly, “Maybe.”

“Lunch break’s over, folks!” Aloysius bellows from the direction of Miriam and Arabella’s place and Matthew shakes his head.

Clayton sighs heavily, “I’m going to strangle him one day,” he says as he pulls away, accepting the dagger that Matthew hands back to him, sliding it back to its rightful place.

Matthew laughs softly, “You keep saying that,” and thumbs at his jaw, winks, and steps away.

And it’s true, their initials have been carved into the wood post.

Somewhere else in the frame of their house, Matthew starts singing, some old work song and it isn’t long before Aloysius joins him with a few of the workers they’ve wrangled into helping for the day.

\-----

Clayton wakes with a start for no reason that he can discern, other than he’s alone. It’s still dark out and the bed is still holding a little of Matthew’s furnace like warmth. He can hear something from the front room though and he slides out from under the blankets.

It’s not cold by any stretch, not with summer burgeoning, but he still scoops up a shirt off the floor and pulls it on. Matthew’s, clearly, he knows by the time it settles around his shoulders, immediately sliding to hang off one shoulder, the hem hitting his thighs. He pushes his face against the fabric because there’s no one here to see him, then walks out of the room.

As soon as he’s in the hallway, he knows what he’s heard.

The piano had been a gift from Miriam, a surprise to Matthew when she’d learned that he could play and the old thing in the church was beyond saving. Matthew had tried to pretend like it was meant for the church at first, but it hadn’t taken much to convince him that it was better suited for their living room.

He pauses in the frame to the room to take in the scene before him.

Moonlight pours through one of the windows, spills across the floor in glowing strips that make it to the piano and the bench and the man upon it. Matthew’s naked where he sits, fingers moving over the keys, and Clayton recognizes the song immediately.

Amazing Grace isn’t a song he’ll claim any sort of fondness to, but when Matthew starts singing it, voice low with a gentle rasp of sleep? His mind might change.

He listens for as long as he can take it, which isn’t very long, before he crosses to the piano, touches his hands against Matthew’s bare shoulders, “Don’t stop on my account,” he says lowly, when Matthew jerks in surprise and startles in his playing. He leans forward, slides his hands down over Matthew’s bare chest, presses against his back.

Matthew’s back rumbles against his chest as he starts singing again.

Clayton tucks his face into his neck, presses gentle kisses to the skin there, splays his hand against Matthew’s chest, feels the movement of his diaphragm as he sings.

“You’re very distracting,” Matthew accuses quietly, when he finishes out the chorus again.

“Sorry,” he replies not at all sorry as he presses a more insistent kiss below Matthew’s ear, scrapes his teeth gently, “I was enjoying the tune, for what it’s worth,” he adds, “the view was a little more appealing this time.”

Matthew’s head tips back against his shoulder with a quiet little hitch in his breath and his cheeks are red, color spilling down his throat as well.

Clayton hums quietly, drags his mouth down lower to a fading bruise at the crux of Matthew’s shoulder and neck, where his high collar covers it. “You should come back to bed,” he cajoles, setting his teeth against the bruise, renewing it with his teeth and tongue.

Under his palms, he can feel Matthew’s pulse thundering.

“So my serenading worked?” Matthew asks, aiming for cheeky, teasing, but not quite managing it when he groans softly after.

Clayton huffs quietly, pulling back to admire his work and to give Matthew the space to stand, “Sure, I’ll let you have that one.”

Matthew turns to him, presses in close, arms sliding around him, and backs him right into the frame of the door, leans down to fits their mouths together, kiss slick and warm and so good despite being sleep stale. He draws back, “Mighty obliging of you,” he says lowly, “Suppose I’ll have to sing more often.”

“I wouldn’t mind it,” Clayton tells him, wedging out of Matthew’s grip and taking his hand, tugging him towards the bedroom.

Behind him, Matthew starts humming, something low and a far cry from Amazing Grace.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @vowofenmity on twitter


End file.
